About twenty years ago, I was in a well known big box store.  I was looking for towels.  There were $8 beach towels near $16 beach towels.  The $8 towel was thinner with a lower thread count and inferior cotton fiber.  The $16 was much softer and probably more absorbent.  The $16 towel was woven in my home state of North Carolina.  The $8 towel was made somewhere in the third world. I watched people purchase the $8 towel.  When people did this, they killed the textile industry in Burlington, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point, and the rest of North Carolina.  They may not have been great jobs, but they were jobs that Americans could perform.  I do not want to hear about the lack of good paying jobs in America when Americans killed American jobs. 

When you get serious about American jobs, we can create them.  But first, Turn off the TV.  Sit at the kitchen table and help your child with their homework.  Read a book to the kids.  Encourage your child to go to college to study math, science and engineering.  Or help your child learn a craft that cannot be sent to India.  Become a plumber, electrician, cabinetmaker.  Be willing to pay a higher price for superior American made quality.

What's very wrong with the economy? A national debt that can never be paid off, and chronic deficits that are within years of being no longer supported by our creditors. Life sucks now, you say? Well, wait till we're not runniing deficits anymore: The suckage will be audible.

We're about to hit a Greecey patch . . ..

i've spent the last few years trying to figure out how can people ineligible to collect unemployment benefits count as people who've given up on looking for work. anthony is correct in his article. the math used by the government is just fraud. the economy still sucks because nobody that has been elected into congress or the presidency wants to do their job, but collect as much money from corporations as possible. i hope there's a viable solution someday to change this, but the outlook is so very grim.

My first exposure to MSN Money and my first reading and ... I am so impressed. Anthony is spot-on as I've spent two years looking for a full-time position while I work in a one-hour-less-than-f​ull-time professional position and experience the incentive to not work and qualify for Medicaid instead of working and having no health insurance. Sadly, I have too much self-esteem to travel that road.....

PS I am not into the class warfare thing but I do recognize 'Crony Capitalism' when I see it; the politically powerful (both sides) and the powerfully rich scratching each other's back while the country suffers. I'm qualified; just give me a full time job with benefits. Is it asking too much to work for a living?

This is an election year in which the US presidency is up for grabs, so it's not surprising that the party controlling The White House is spewing out BS statistics to sway the gullible and naive, in an attempt to get re-elected.

Yeah, I mean, the agency that does it has been functioning since 1940, and if you read their papers on statistical methodology, it's not as if it comes from the theoretical side of that field and is established and pursued that way by people with PHDs in economics/math/etc

Bush several times ran down to the BLS and advised them how to do things.

http://www.bls.gov/o​pub/mlr/1985/02/art2​full.pdf

I mean, clearly, Presidents just come up with the above. I really hope my sarcasm is coming thru here.

  As 2012 progresses the BS and the vote buying will likely increase dramatically.  Take it for what it is.  The reality is that Obama has been bumming around in The White House for three years now, and even after stealing and squandering trillions of dollars of wealth from innocent future generations there's really nothing to show for it.  Which isn't surprising because big government just prolongs recessions.

I guess this depends on what you define as government and what is private.

In all honesty, there's lots of hard working government people (like statistical agencies, who pursue the data, of course, whoever uses the data in media is you know....). But the government is a wholly owned subsidiary of Corporate America today.

In a more honest analysis, what you are saying, *didn't prove out* in 1929. From 1929- January 1933 the government stood back and relied on *private markets* to fix the barreling train of the depression.

The result was a complete collapse (should be obvious, business will be the first to pull investment during downturns in a rush to the exit). What is more causing prolonged recessions these days is the Federal Reserve. And as much as people would like to point to it as a government entity. It is privately powered. And working on behalf of mega corporations and mega banks everywhere.

To prolong recessions and concentrate wealth and keep wages down. You know, those types of things.

http://www.bing.com/​images/search?q=aver​age+duration+of+econ​omic+recovery+is+inc​reasing&view=detail&​id=17887081C72F2401A​251C45E3422A9293E27F​BA2&first=0&FORM=IDF​RIR

 Businesses and the free market gradually adapt despite all the shenanigans of big government, and the economy gradually improves.  This is the way it's always been.

Except the depression?

They actually did the opposite of what you're saying. They *never* gradually fixed anything. They waited for government spending taken out on massive loan programs (i.e. selling bonds) to create demand and then momentum (largely military spending).

http://www.bea.gov/i​Table/iTable.cfm?Req​ID=9&step=1

Businesses are not going to come in unless there's demand. Period. And where is demand going to come from when Business investment went from 16.5 billion in 1929 to 1.7 billion in 1933.

1933-1937 actually shows *again* the opposite of what you want to point out. FDR unbalanced the budget and spent, *then* private business starts investing again. 1937 comes along and what happens? Spending Hawks say to balance the budget *before* the recovery was in full hold.

1937-1938 is another recession, inside the depression. Eventually, massive government military spending pulls the private sector back in and finally a sustainable recovery occurs.